


Colors In The Blur, He's There To Fight The Highway....

by orphan_account



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M, Sad Ending, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was when Luke went to touch the wet area on his shoulder when a jolt of pain and horror shot down his spine. He drew his fingers and looked at them, his crimson blood drying quickly in the sunlight. His stomach dropped and he knew exactly what happened while he tried running from the zombies.or the one where Michael's worst fear comes true





	Colors In The Blur, He's There To Fight The Highway....

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from 'For You Forever' by Set It Off !

Michael couldn't quite place the reason why the end of it was so painful. They'd been together since it first started, the infection spreading like wildfire while they'd both been on the same train headed into London. 

Now? It had to have been a month since it all started. London was a deadly war zone full of those things, crawling around and infecting everyone. They'd gotten Michael's best friend, Calum, a few days after the train incident. He was devastated, but the infection kept spreading further and further, killing everything in its wake, leaving nothing behind but reanimated corpses, hunting for their next victims.

Of course they'd been found. There was no way they could've outran it after Luke twisted his ankle while they did their best to hike the terrain between London and Oxford. 

So there they were: two men who'd only met in the past four weeks because of a deadly disease outbreak (Luke would try to say it was fate but Michael only rolled his eyes, fate would've been meeting while getting coffee or at a random concert, not on a train escaping from zombies).

Luke had been bitten almost an hour ago at that point. At that point, neither of them knew anything went wrong while escaping the last large horde, both of them making it away from the zombies relatively safely… or so they thought.

It was when Luke went to touch the wet area on his shoulder when a jolt of pain and horror shot down his spine. He drew his fingers and looked at them, his crimson blood drying quickly in the sunlight. His stomach dropped and he knew exactly what happened while he tried running from the zombies.

It was a bite. He didn't want to say anything for the next few miles- he could just wait until they were relatively far up from the ground to find a cliff to jump from, or a particularly loose piece of land to 'accidentally' slip from. He couldn't bear to think about being the reason for Michael's demise. 

So he stayed quiet until the vomiting started. That's when Michael knew something was terribly wrong, something Luke hadn't told him about.

"You're a fucking dumbass, Luke Hemmings," Michael said, holding back Luke's long blonde hair and his own tears. Luke didn't say anything as another retch shook his abdomen and forced him to double over. These were the side effects nobody had ever imagined would be possible before the infection started spreading. In shows like The Walking Dead, the writer’s had assumed that the deterioration of man would be quick, the death overtaking a body soon after zombies made physical contact with an uninfected human. Michael wishes it were like that, wishes that the transformation between living and dead wasn’t so violent because no one deserved to die like that. Luke didn’t deserve to die like that. 

It wasn't long before Luke couldn't walk anymore, all of his control over his muscles beginning the slow and painful process of wasting away. Michael couldn't just leave him in the middle of nowhere to die alone. He didn't know what they'd planned to do anyway as soon as they got to Oxford.

He picked Luke up as best as he could, his knees shaking with every step because Luke wasn't a small guy, but at that point he couldn't do anything other than breathe in a strained manner, blink, and speak quietly. As soon as they were off to the side of the path, he set Luke against a tree, his clothed back pressed against the rough bark. Sweat ran down Michael’s temple and he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding in.

" 'm sorry, Michael, I'm so sorry," he tried swallowing, but his mouth was dry and his skin broke out into a cold sweat. He wanted to scream because Michael was supposed to survive, he wasn't supposed to stay back for Luke but he did anyway.

"I'm not just fucking leaving you here to die alone, asshole, " Michael says with wet cheeks and a watery voice. The whole situation was beyond fucked and it was too late to abandon ship. Luke was the only thing keeping him sane after seeing the mass amounts of carnage and chaos brought on by the infection. There was nothing else to live for. 

"Sing for me," Luke said weakly, his baby blues staring into the very core of Michael's being. He couldn't say no because he wasn't in any position to while huddled over the body of his dying companion. It was hard to watch as Luke's face slowly began to lose its color, going from a healthy flesh tone to one that resembled a glass of cold milk. His skin lost its warmth, the blood in his veins beginning to still, and his ancient ice blue eyes fading to a stone-cold grey.

" _Nothing left to learn on the shoulder of the road, colors in the blur, he's there to fight the highway, digging into turns was digging up his soul, but now the pavement burns, and these eyes don't point the right way..._ " He carried on as best as he could, watching the corners of Luke's mouth turn up in the ghost of a smile, a haunting reminder that Luke would never be the same man Michael met on the train and came to know over the course of the month. 

He stumbled over the choruses, the words sounding foreign and unpracticed but he didn't care. He didn’t even know if Luke knew was he was signing. It was cathartic.

" _I won't wait for you forever, for you forever, so, don't you say, It's for the better, It's for the better, cause I can't take later than never, later than never… No, I won't wait for you forever, forever..._ "

Luke's loud breaths grew quieter and quieter, the sound of rustling leaves filling Michael's ears as he leaned his back against the trunk of the tree Luke was leaned up against. He set his backpack down and took his hat off, letting his slightly grown out hair fall over his face as he sat and thought about his options moving forward. For a brief moment he thought about sprinting, getting as far away from Luke as he could before the other turned so that maybe he could get out of it. He couldn't bring himself to do it, looking over at Luke's milk white features, illuminated by the sunlight. He decided that there truly was nothing waiting for him on the other side if the apocalypse, his parents probably long since dead due to their close proximity to one of the largest cities in Australia. He took a deep breath and leaned his head against the tree.

He would wait there until Luke came back.


End file.
